Openlibrary: Move edition causes new works to be created

[LeadSongDog]

For some reason, despite numerous attempts (from Chrome and Firefox, on iOS and on Windows), edition OL13763080M will not link to the work input : OL14853009W
Instead, edits alternate between deleting the existing work link and creating a brand new one from the edition data. Each time, the UI shows the correct title as a dropdown under "What work is this an edition of" when I fill in OL14853009W, and clicking on that title populates the title: subtitle value. Something very strange is going on.

[seabelis]

I've experienced this as well.

[LeadSongDog]

Seems it was a workless edition. Once I assigned an author a one-edition work was created https://openlibrary.org/books/OL13763080M/Histoire_illustr%C3%A9e_des_inventions?b=16&a=15&_compare=Compare&m=diff
Then I could relink the edition to the proper work

[seabelis]

Adding the author doesn't always do the trick. Try moving this edition to OL17762235W, for example.

[LeadSongDog]

You're right, @seabelis. And in the meanwhile new, unnecessary, redundant Work pages are created. Ugh!

[seabelis]

Yeah, I have a whole list of books with the tag "Not Good" just waiting for a resolution.

[LeadSongDog]

Wait, is that a tag on the edition/work record's "what's it about?" describing the record rather than the book, or a tag on a personal list?

[seabelis]

personal list. "not ok" https://openlibrary.org/people/seabelis/lists/OL119930L/not_ok

[LeadSongDog]

whew!

[LeadSongDog]

At some point we are going to need to clean up all these redundant delinked work records. Typically these show on title or author searches as having 1 or editions, but not consistently. For instance,
https://openlibrary.org/works/OL17835670W is shown on https://openlibrary.org/authors/OL7396111A/Siddhartha_Mukherjee as having 1 edition, but internally it shows no editions. Either way, whether is shows 0 or 1, if it doesn't have editions, the work should be redirected to one that does.

[seabelis]

I think one cause of this is the presence of a subtitle in the work's title.
For the target work only. I don't think the source work matters.

[LeadSongDog]

Even after your edit: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL17835670W/The_Gene?b=3&a=2&_compare=Compare&m=diff
there is no subtitle on the work, but it still shows on the list with no editions.

https://openlibrary.org/authors/OL7396111A/Siddhartha_Mukherjee
shows many work records for The Gene without showing an edition count. Some show placeholder covers, while others do not. Clicking through to those they show "0 editions" in either case. Looking at the .json there is a difference between the cases: some have the string "covers": [-1], while the others don't. The ones without the string such as https://openlibrary.org/works/OL17800865W show the grey placeholder cover. The ones without the string such as https://openlibrary.org/works/OL17835669W do not.

[seabelis]

The other thing I've noticed is that after author merges, the " stuck" editions can be moved. In the case you mention above, there are two profiles for the author: https://openlibrary.org/authors/OL7396111A/Siddhartha_Mukherjee and https://openlibrary.org/authors/OL6865237A/Siddhartha_Mukherjee. This might be the reason on that one.

[cdrini]

Ah; I believe this is the same issue as #730, correct, @LeadSongDog ? I think that was closed by accident.

[seabelis]

The issue now seems to be a new work-less edition is created which is then un-editable as in https://github.com/internetarchive/openlibrary/issues/1891.